


Extended Family

by Icon_UK



Category: New Avengers (Comics), New Mutants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 12:10:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15243111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icon_UK/pseuds/Icon_UK
Summary: Seeking to provide an explanation for Sam Guthrie's ever-shifting family line up)





	Extended Family

It was on her third or fourth visit to the Guthrie farm that Izzy finally realised that something unusual was going on.

They made sure to take the time to visit Sam’s Mom and family as often as they could, when on Earth. Sam had faced down Imperial Superguardian Gladiator in combat, but compared to Lucinda Guthrie when denied the chance to make a fuss over her first grandchild, Gladiator was the easy option.

As they walked towards the farmhouse, Izzy carrying what luggage they taken and Sam with baby Josh in his carry-harness (Sam stressed that this division of labour was because Izzy could benchpress an 18 wheeler without straining and he couldn’t and _not_ just because he took any opportunity he could to carry Josh, but he was fooling nobody).

Two small figures came barrelling out of the house, skittered to a stop, waved in their general direction and ran around the corner of the house,

Izzy frowned, and ran through the list of Sam’s relatives in her head. “Who were they?”

“Just the twins”

“I thought the twins were brunettes, and only one of them was a girl.”

Even as she said it Izzy felt it sounding odd in her head.

Sam smiled, “Hold on to that thought, and I mean HOLD ON to it”

“What thought?”

“Tell me, what do the twins look like?”

“Well, they’re about 12 now, blonde, both girls, one keeps her hair in a ponytail, the other keeps it loose, but to be honest I can never rem….”

Even as she said it she shook her head. “No wait, that’s not right, they’re fraternal twins, one boy one girl…  brown hair but… no… What?”

“It’s crazy the way it gets into your head isn’t it?”

Izzy was about to ask for an explanation, but they’d reached the house by now and a veritable swarm of Guthries descended on their oldest brother and his wife, though both were quite aware the focus was going to be Josh, who was doing his best to be adorably chubby and happy to see his aunts and uncles.

As they gathered around, Izzy started looking more closely at them, she recognised most of them of course, Elizabeth, Ty and so on but a couple of them were momentarily unfamiliar until she thought about it and the names clicked into place. Sam seemed totally unfazed, so she let it slide until later.

Besides, any attempt at conversation had to wait as Lucinda came in (She had insisted Izzy call her Lucinda or “Ma” but that last one still seemed a little wrong to her, she’d get there though), followed by a smaller Guthrie carrying a jug of lemonade and the next ten minutes were solid cooing sounds, peppered with sincere, if slightly perfunctory, queries about how Sam and Izzy were doing and a lot more very detailed questions about how Josh was doing. They knew the score and it’s not like they were reluctant to talk about that subject. They confirmed that; Yes, he was crawling, and yes, his hand-eye co-ordination was doing very well, and oh yes, he could also fly, though not very far yet and his protective blast field was coming along nicely, so childproofing would have to be taken to a new level at some point, but he wasn’t likely to hurt himself meantime.

So all in all, Sam and Izzy didn’t actually have time to talk again until they were sitting on the porch, whilst the bustling sounds of a table being laid for supper came from inside. (Sam had started to help but had been ushered out… he planned to sneak in and help with the washing up afterwards though, some things were bred deep in a Guthrie)

“Now, about these new members of the family…”

Sam smiled, his wife has never one to let anything lie.

“Warlock was the first one to notice it, he and Doug came out for a visit a while back. We’ve noticed since Doug came back to us, he can get a little… overwhelmed by things at times, like he can’t stop reading people. and things, and whatever else is going on around him, and it stresses him out. So the team agreed to set up breaks for him, away from cities, too many strangers and TV’s and wi-fi.  O’course, Warlock always goes with him. I know, shocker, right?

“And?”

“Well, you know how much Warlock loves kids, and how much they love him? Like they do anything else, the goof’s made out of rubber bands and LEGOs”

“So he had a list of all my family so he can call them by name and what games they like, stuff like that… and then when he got here, a lot of it didn’t match up with what he found. The kids didn’t look like the kids he’d met before, or had different names”

“He and Doug worked it out together. Doug’s got this weird sensitivity to the way the world works now, and Warlock can make scanners and sensors up the wazoo, he can check things even your ExoSpex probably can’t see.“

“Near as they could figure it between them, space here is… thin. There are gaps between this and other worlds, other dimensions, other Earths. Happens more often than you’d think. You should talk to Kitty and Kurt about their time in Excalibur sometime.”

“So my family live on this Earth, but there are other families, other Guthries, a hairsbreadth away in another dimension, and sometimes one of us just walks through to one of their worlds, or one of theirs walks into ours, and something about it means that they just click into place wherever they are and are accepted, until they go back home.”

Izzy thought about this and sighed.

“Actually, with some of the stuff I’ve seen out in space and down on Earth, I can buy that quite easily. From what I know though, the multiverse is REALLY varied. What happens when one of them comes from a world where things are really different, like, I don’t know, people have three arms, or are Nazi’s, or look like dinosaurs?”

Same bridled a little, “If you think there’s any Guthrie anywhere that would be a Nazi, you don’t know my family. But mostly I think we just adjust to accept them, whoever they are, and seeing how my kin scrap and eat, they’d be less difference than you might think if one of them were a velociraptor.“

“I don’t think it gets THAT different though, Doug and Lock thought the nexus only extends a few worlds out, before things get really different. Enough to make it interesting at least.”

“And you’re okay with this? And your Mom?”

“We think we’ve both shifted from time to time too, so we’re part of it too. "

He continued "More importantly though, well…. you’re from Iowa, that’s almost as good as Kentucky.. “ He didn’t try to avoid the punch on the arm. “…and you know how these things work.”

“When I told Ma about it, I asked if she wanted me to look into trying to stop it happening and she just shrugged, and said that it had done no harm so far. She said that the Guthrie rule was that whoever shows up at the table, you feed, whether it's kin or their friends. It don’t matter if there’s barely enough to go around, you feed them because that’s how being a neighbour works, and the same is true if one of yours eats at someone else’s house. It’s just how it’s done around these parts“

“I guess some thing really are universal.. well, multiversal. We’ve probably fed more than a few spare Guthries, and maybe a few had funny accents, or looked more like Xi’an than me, or even had gills, but I guess that means we’ve all probably eaten in a few other families houses too, over the years, and they’ve never made a fuss about us being pink skinned, or not having gills. So it wouldn’t be being a good neighbour to just the door in their face, they ARE family after all.”

“Looking back, I think there was at least one time I saw Jay after we’d lost him” Izzy heard the catch in his voice. “But I know it wasn’t our Jay, so I don’t think it counts. I’m sure I’ve never seen my Pa though, that would be too much to hope for.”

Izzy hugged him. “That’s what I love about you and your family Sam, you live in the middle of a dimensional nexus and yout biggest concern is whether they made enough stew to go round.”

Sam watched Josh, who was currently tethered to the sturdiest bench on the porch, and was happily bobbing in mid-air, and clearly wondering if fireflies were worth chasing after.

“Of course, if things do shift when we’re here, I might walk out of here with a different wife and a different kid.”

Izzy grinned “Ooh, that means I might too! I might even trade up! Tell me, are there any really _handsome_ Sam’s out there?” She winked at him as he clutched his heart in fake-shock and luckily for whatever might have been said next, they heard the call to supper, and started to head indoors.

As Izzy pulled Josh down from the air and into her arms, where he settled happilym she reassured Sam. “Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure I can download something that might not close the gaps, but will make sure that the three of us don’t shift if we don’t want to, and I think until Josh is a bit older, we don’t let him start making side trips to yet MORE family who’ll spoil him any more than they currently do.”

Sam nodded, “Those would be some mighty complicated permission slips we’d need to sign too… Best we keep things local for a while.”

They headed indoors, to where a new definition of extended family was waiting for them.


End file.
